DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: As a Young Senator, Biden Supported Keeping ‘Boat People’ Out of the U.S.

As a freshman senator in 1975, Joe Biden joined Sen. Robert Byrd (D., W.Va.) in opposing legislation allowing 130,000 Vietnam War refugees asylum in the United States, including thousands of children.

President Gerald Ford proposed a Vietnam refugee relief program that would settle thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodian families in the United States. The bill was met with resistance from a Democratic majority in Congress. Sen. Byrd cited fear of admitting “undesirables” such as “barmaids, prostitutes, and criminals” to the country.

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Byrd—Biden’s colleague and an early opponent of Ford’s plan—was a member of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan as a young man.

In addition to Slow Joe’s recent, err, even further slowing down, perhaps fear of Trump discussing Biden’s often sordid backstory on a national stage is yet another reason why Nancy Pelosi recently said, ‘I don’t think there should be any debates’ between Biden and Trump.